2013: Infected Wars to be a cooperative game for iOS

Zombies have been a hot property in entertainment for the last several years. Long neglected in the 1990s and early 2000s, the undead have seen a reanimation in pop culture, largely thanks to the hit TV show The Walking Dead and unexpected blockbusters like World War Z.

Several zombie-themed games have appeared on iOS recently (including the aforementioned titles), and the newest addition does more than just splash guts around on your iPhone screen -- it marks a new milestone for iOS gaming.

Zombie shooter 2013: Infected Wars -- released exclusively for iOS this week -- is the first game on the platform to offer co-op game play, meaning multiple users can play simultaneously with each other on different devices in the same game. 2013: Infected Wars accomplishes this by working through Apple's Game Center and as AllThingsD points out, if the game is successful, it could do a lot to boost the credibility of iOS devices as serious gaming machines:

A phrase often heard in console gaming circles is "system seller," which is shorthand for software that so successfully demonstrates a console's capabilities that it can move the hardware off store shelves. Two classic examples would be the first Halo game for the Xbox, or the Wii Sports games for the Wii.

Apple, of course, is in a different boat: It's primarily in the hardware business, but a growing roster of increasingly diverse games serves the App Store brand better than one or two system sellers. Smartphones have so many other uses -- and can be so expensive, depending on what you buy -- that soliciting multiplayer games from both the Zyngas and the Action Mobiles of the world is a logical strategy.

For some readers, the difference between two zombie-shooting games with and without co-op story campaigns may seem piddling. But, taken together, these baby steps in making mobile games more "serious" and, hence, appealing to PC and console gamers' demands, could go a long way toward helping mobile disrupt the traditional gaming market, even more than it already has.